


keep the light on (this is everything)

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: (Emphasis on ‘Comfort’), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Casual Intimacy, Domesticity, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Body Worship/Body Size Kink, Pining, Slow Burn (of a sort), The Understood ‘You’
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 16:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6527713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with little things. Practical things. Things that are completely beyond their choosing, random chance working for or against or neutrally in line with who and what they are and choose, but little things, really, that just generally make sense. It starts with the little things, yeah. </p><p>But what it ends up adding-up to is that Chris is pretty sure he might just be a doting house-husband, without the house, specifically. Technically. Or the marriage. Or hell, even the relationship that leads <i>to</i> a marriage. Same doting though. Same heart-on-his-sleeve-in-his-throat. Yeah.</p><p>Chris thinks he might be the doting no-house-not-husband, and what's more?</p><p>He’s pretty sure he doesn’t mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep the light on (this is everything)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luninosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/gifts).



> For [luninosity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity): unbeta’d, but given with a great deal of hugs and affection. Just a little musing for your birthday, dear (early because I don't know if I'll be able to post on the proper day). I hope at least it makes you smile :-)
> 
> Title credit to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDRDZndLbzo&nohtml5=False).

It starts with little things. Practical things. Things that are completely beyond their choosing, random chance working for or against or neutrally in line with who and what they are and choose, but little things, really, that just generally make sense.

Like the fact that Chris feels like his muscle mass is quite possibly in the negative range or something, because he’s doing an indie film that was very clear that they were _not_ aiming for the macho superhero look, where Sebastian’s possibly got more bulk than he’s ever done, having agreed to new terms in his endless contract to encompass a Winter Soldier solo film spanning the character’s time as an assassin. The height of the physical prowess of one Bucky Barnes. 

Or the fact that both their jobs have them in New York at present. Chris is filming, Seb’s still training (like he fucking needs it), and Chris is at his place his first night, just decompressing after an admittedly short flight but a flight nonetheless, which always sets him a little off-kilter, but they’re at Sebastian’s and they’re both at least five beers deep into the evening when Sebastian, apropos of nothing exactly, save everything that is Chris, heart and mind and body and soul and every time that Chris is away from Sebastian for any span of time, he forgets how easily someone in this world knows those things about him. Like they were written in Sebastian somewhere, somehow, _to_ be known, and simply matched Chris from the very first.

So Sebastian says, apropos of maybe everything: 

“Fuck the hotel, Chris, you know you hate them,” and it’s not the first time, of course it’s not the first time that Sebastian’s shoulder against Chris’s shoulder feels like the lick of fire that’s then doused with ice and burns all the more for the attempt to soothe it.

“Just stay here.”

Chris feels faint, a little, pulse racing out of nowhere like he’s just run a marathon and his blood’s railing hard against the sudden shift.

He swallows, and it’s dry for the alcohol, and he wonders if Sebastian, who holds his liquor better, can feel it. Can hear the things he doesn’t say, the things that the thrumming of his heart doesn’t say.

“I’m gonna have to check in eventually--”

“I mean stay here,” Sebastian cuts off his only-just-shy-of-slurring protest. “For the whole thing.”

And maybe Chris didn’t hear that right.

“Seb, the whole _shoot_ is here.”

Sebastian looks at him sharply, for one second, before shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head and saying simply, softly, drawn out slow enough for Chris to pick out every gorgeous letter of the single syllable and end up aching for more, so much more:

“ _And_?”

“Come on,” Sebastian stands, and Chris’s eyes follow him with a notable lag, not just got the beer, or the flight, or the pounding of his heart for no good reason except _every good reason_. Sebastian holds out both hands and looks to Chris expectantly. Chris for his own part, only blinks.

“You’re dead on your _ass_ ,” Sebastian grins, a little taunting, and a little bit of what Chris would call fond in his own head, but that’s because he’s biased and desperate and is so filled with longing sometimes that it could kill him, if it wanted to, and thank god it hasn’t wanted to yet. “I’m not letting you get to your feet on your own.”

Sebastian’s hands are warm. They always are. Chris probably shouldn’t know that, or have stored it away, or have dwelled on it and woven it into fantasy the way that he has but, well. 

Chris does a lot of shit that he shouldn’t.

Sebastian leads him, guides him, pulls him in the direction that Chris already knows by rote because he’s stayed here enough times to navigate it blind or drunk, but what Chris’s foggy brain registers about the slow, careful trip to the guest room is Sebastian’s strength, Sebastian’s comforting breadth as he presses against Chris, completely innocent in preemptively avoiding corners and walls, but Chris has never been slimmer than Sebastian—they’ve either both been built up for the same film, or not, or Chris was the one who had the extra inch of height alongside the extra pounds of muscle.

Chris’s heart does something strange as fuck, breathtaking in an almost painful way, when Chris stumbles for the realization, and Sebastian’s chest presses against him, thick arms bracing him careful, innocuous: oh.

“Careful, buddy,” Sebastian laughs softly, just at his ear, and the little chuckle presses that chest to Chris’s spine all the tighter, in little bursts of precious, horrible contact.

Oh, _wow_.

Sebastian ushers him into the room Chris always ends up crashing in, the one in which Sebastian tells him to “just move the fuckin’ bed so the sun doesn’t wake you up, man, it’s not rocket science” and Chris does, eventually, but he moves it right back when he leaves except last time, last time he’d nearly missed his flight and Sebastian had laughed at him in that sweet fucking way he has when he _means_ it from the heart of him, pushing him out of the apartment with a “get your ass out of here, Evans, and don’t forget to empty your fucking pockets at security, I’m gonna text you that one, that always just makes late into a missed flight and _then_ where do you end up?” and where Chris ends up when that happens is whining to Sebastian on the phone while he waits for a flight change, with Sebastian being absolutely unrepentant with the “I told you so”’s. 

So, basically: Chris hadn’t moved things back, last time. Months ago.

And they’re exactly how he left them, now.

“You kept the room the way I left it,” he says, a little struck-dumb with it for reasons he doesn’t want to really delve too far into.

Sebastian settles him on the bed and leans him back, though Chris really doesn’t need it. Not that he says as much.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Sebastian asks, like Chris has posed an absurd question that makes absolutely no sense to the rational mind.

“Haven’t you had other people come to visit?”

Sebastian crouches, and pulls Chris’s socks off. Because he knows Chris hates sleeping in his socks.

He _knows_ that.

“There’re other rooms,” Sebastian answers with a shrug, like it’s nothing, then grips Chris’s shoulder maybe longer, maybe shorter, maybe just the right length it should be, but it sets a pleasant kind of warmth through Chris’s veins, like sunrise in the middle of the night, and Sebastian just says “Sleep tight, man.” And then he’s gone.

Chris would spend the rest of the hours between that moment precisely and just-after-dawn thinking on what this means—what _any_ of this _means_ —if he wasn’t out as soon as he hit the pillows.

\--------------------

In the morning, Chris doesn’t check-in to his hotel.

\--------------------

He’d say they establish a satisfying rhythm to life as sorta-housemates, except Chris knows that’s a fucking lie.

They don’t establish anything. Chris has _established_ being around a person, living with a person, sharing space and life with another human being before. There’s a method to it, growing pains, a period of give-and-take. They don’t “establish” what this is.

It just happens. No planning, no intention. No effort involved.

Like breathing. 

Sebastian might not be filming, but his day starts before and ends after Chris’s— _his_ director’s all about natural lighting—and Chris remembers what it was like, keeping on the muscle mass, perfecting the fight choreography, and hell, Chris had never _really_ carried his own Cap film as single-handedly Sebastian’s being expected to in this one, so he can really only read the toll it takes in the exhaustion on Sebastian’s face, as opposed to the utterly unthinkable muscles on him that speak to the contrary. 

That said, Chris still wakes up at a decent time for a quick on at least half the days of the week, and even he doesn’t plan those in advance—nevertheless, the coffee is always scheduled to brew when he gets up, even before _he_ knows when he’s going to get up. Like Sebastian just understands based on when he goes to bed, or what he looks like when he turns in, or maybe what he says without meaning to, like, some tell Chris doesn’t even know about himself, and yes, Chris is probably reading too much into it, but.

 _But_.

So: Chris knows Sebastian’s more of a sugar-and-caffeine kind of guy, and the that kind of diet required of his current role is at odds with what he leans toward on his own time, and there are a lot of second-hand bookshops near his own filming locations, because it’s New York, and maybe Chris does a little reading in the off-moments, all the hurry-up-and-wait, to see if maybe he can’t do more than just making sure that Seb’s got the protein and carb ratio tailored specifically to complement his gym schedule, which Seb’s grateful enough for (and Chris relishes the heat his tired smiles send bubbling through his own chest every evening at the dinner table); but maybe Chris can do better. Can find something sweeter, can figure a protein-shake version of a Frappucino that doesn’t violate the regimen. Chris can get creative when he’s motivated.

And he’s definitely motivated, particularly once he gets the coffee thing right and wakes up early to be the one who gives _Sebastian_ his morning caffeine, and Seb looks like he’s either going to laugh or cry at the very first sip, but in the end he does neither.

Instead, he says: “I’m gonna fucking kiss you, Christopher, holy _shit_.”

And maybe the sloppy, half-joking, half-relieved smooch _is_ just about the most bro-to-bro version of a kiss that a kiss can possibly be, but still.

Chris’s pulse ratchets up a notch just _thinking_ about it, for _days_ after.

Doing more than just thinking about it, however, makes it very clear that fate is smiling down on Chris for the fact that he has hours between the end of his day and Sebastian getting home—plenty of time to wash his sheets with no one the wiser.

And maybe Chris notices the way that Sebastian moved with a little less of that awkward-perfect-impossible-grace that was made of him and him alone,even after the requisite adjustment period of new routines eked out their vengeance on his body (and maybe, yeah, maybe Chris notices because he watches Sebastian in every possible minute he’s about to grab, too close: not just his attention, but the way he holds it too close to a heart that’s _asking_ to be bruised at best, and shattered at worst for this fucking infatuation, Jesus _Christ_ ), but yeah, fine. Maybe he asks his new masseuse where he might learn a few amateur maneuvers to relieve exercise related tension and discomfort. And yes, the studio would’ve picked up that tab gladly, Chris knows, but he asks anyway. Because he wants to help.

Because the idea of his _hands_ being _allowed_ on that _body_ —

 _Ah_ , his massage therapist smiles knowingly. _A little something special, then, for someone special._

No, no, nothing like that.

Except that is actually precisely what it’s like, because that is the fucking understood _you_ , here, isn’t it. Fuck. 

_Fuck_

So it starts with the little things, yeah. But what it ends up adding up to is that Chris is pretty sure he might just be a doting housewife. Husband. House _husband_ , just without the house, specifically. Technically. Or the marriage. Or hell, even the relationship that leads _to_ a marriage. Same doting though. Same heart-on-his-sleeve-in-his-throat. Same horrified, blissful sensation of _want_ the first time his fingers work the tightness out of those shoulders. Just, yeah.

Chris thinks he might be the doting house-not-husband, and he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t even mind.

\--------------------

 

It’s a shit day on set. It’s a shit day in general. It’s a shit day, and it hits Chris wrong, because sometimes that’s just how the goddamn cookie crumbles.

He’s not sure how long he’s curled up in the corner of the sofa, staring out to nothing, choking unevenly now and again on nothing but air; he doesn’t know. 

Sometimes it just happens like that.

“Chris,” Sebastian’s voice rings out of nowhere, and that tells him he’s been staring and fretting and frozen for a good couple of hours, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, the fact that he didn’t start dinner like he’d planned to, like he always _does_ , takes it all the way to _even worse_.

“ _Chris_!” 

And Sebastian’s footsteps reverberate through the floorboards, heavy and quickened when Sebastian finds him, and Chris feels horrible at that, because Sebastian’s seen him like this, found him way worse off than he feels just now—cracking and crumbling and snapping at the seams in the then versus down and heartsick and a little overwhelmed in the now—so Sebastian’s primed to be wary, to be concerned at what he sees, and Chris hates that he’s ever needed to.

Chris hates that he’s made Sebastian feel the need to _now_.

“Look at me,” Sebastian slides next to him, takes Chris’s hand in one of his own and uses the other to lift Chris’s chin, and Chris doesn’t realize he’s shaking until Sebastian touches him and the world turns solid. Sebastian looks concerned, not scared, but as if he’s too resolute in being a rock to let himself be scared. Like he wants to be, but shuts it down hard. 

“Chris, I’m gonna need you to listen to me, okay?” He speaks clear, and even, and Chris hates that he’s scaring this man that he feels so fucking _much_ for, who knows the best and the worst of him and keeps him, maybe not the way he wants or wishes in his most daring and hopeless of dreams but _keeps him_ anyway.

“Whatever happened, it’s not important right now,” and again: Sebastian’s learned that the hard way. Chris is so much better off with moving past the what and focused on the _what followed and took you here in your head_ , and Chris has been avoiding where his head is flashing out toward now, a single word that speaks to so much and yet only to a part of what he’s flooded with when he _looks_ at Sebastian, and he’s so fucked.

He is _so fucked_.

“You’re hurting, I can see it and I know it’s hard, okay, I know, but please,” and Sebastian’s voice stumbles, a little, goes low, and yes: Chris is hurting. Was hurting when Sebastian found him because sometimes life’s too much, but now he’s hurting for the hurt he’s causing this man that he—

“Please, it,” Sebastian reaches and gathers both of Chris’s hands now. “It kills me to see you like this, ‘cause you don’t deserve to hurt, not ever. You deserve the best things, all the best things, _only_ the best things okay? And to watch you feeling anything less than that truth, it, it _kills_ me, Chris.”

And oh, Chris’s heart skips for those words. Leaps and berates itself for the gesture, all at once.

“I’m gonna be selfish as fuck,” Sebastian breathes, and draws Chris a little closer. “And I’m gonna ask you to try and let it go, whatever it is, just a little, alright? If not for you, if you can’t do it on your own, than can you do it with me? All you’ve gotta do is just follow me, okay, follow this,” and Sebastian shifts, brings them face to face and draws Chris’s hands to his chest; “and follow this,” and he breathes in so long and deep that Chris feels himself start to calm automatically, in a way he’s never felt so simply and freely before, not once. 

“And look at me, just at me,” Sebastian says, still breathing so steady and deep, and his eyes are so wide, and so bright. “We’re all that’s here, we’re all that is and all you gotta do in this moment is follow me as best you can, okay? Don’t leave me hangin’, okay, don’t let go,” and Sebastian comes closer, somehow. Draws nearer, and presses Chris’s hands tighter to his chest and murmurs so that Chris hears and feels it at the exact same time. 

“And don’t lose me, okay?” Sebastian reminds him, pragmatic and soothing, the tone of his voice like a goddamn song with the way it lulls Chris, with the way it matches Sebastian’s thumbs drawing circles against the bones of his wrist. “I won’t let you get lost, but you gotta keep me close too, yeah?”

And Chris’s heart’s hitting quick and hard against Sebastian’s touch, now, but for wholly new reasons. Reasons Chris feels guilty for, like this, because they’re so far from the ones that brought Sebastian here, to him, to touch and care for him as Chris’s care for the world and its weights bleeds away with stunning simplicity, for once, in the face of a world that narrows just to Sebastian.

Who is trying to calm him, to ease him, and fuck, Chris feels sick to his stomach. He can’t take advantage of Sebastian’s giving heart for the sake of his own wanting one. He won’t.

“I,” Chris starts, voice breathier than he ever wanted it to be. “I’m, it’s…”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Sebastian cuts him off, and lets go of his grip on Chris’s skin to fold him into his chest in the kind of hug that’s less a hug than a true embrace, an envelopment, and Chris has so rarely felt _small_ in his life but he feels small enough to be damn near _cradled_ against Sebastian’s chest, strong arms around _him_ , breath and heartbeat tucked against _him_ , tucked under Sebastian’s chin as Sebastian just keeps speaking, just holds him tighter as if against his will: “it’s okay, you don’t have to say anything.”

“But,” Chris starts, but then there are innocent lips pressed to the top of his head, and the world stops before his own words do.

“I’m here,” Sebastian murmurs, folding his body further around Chris as if to prove the point. “I’m not going anywhere, just relax, breathe. Breathe, and be right here, with me. Don’t let your head take you anywhere else.” He threads their hands together, the motion more intentional than before, for the intent itself something like an afterthought.

“Like I said,” Seb huffs out, a strained little laugh that catches inside Chris’s chest, delicious and devastating for all that he wants against all that he has: “Don’t lose me.”

And moving is beyond Chris’s ability, guilt or no, and so all he does is breathe heavy against Sebastian’s collarbone, all he does is sink against that forgiving inviting embrace and he can’t help but wonder what it could feel like, skin to skin like that, overtaken and overcome with something bigger than himself, encompassed by a weight and presence that is, too, bigger than himself, capable to holding on and keeping, keeping, _keeping_...

It’s a good thought, though, impossible as it is. Good enough that his breath aligns without trying to the rise and fall of Sebastian’s chest against him.

“You okay?” Sebastian asks, and Chris exhales, dead weight as he forces himself to pull back and meet Sebastian’s gaze.

“Yeah, I,” Chris rasps, then clears his throat, feels himself blush. “Thanks.”

Sebastian reaches out and brushes Chris’s hair from his face, flattens where it tends to stick up in the back.

“Always.”

There’s something heavy in that single word, and Chris is breathless as Sebastian watches him, long and level, before he nods, and moves to stand.

“I’m gonna grab you a glass of water, okay?”

Chris, in turn, can only nod himself. When Sebastian’s out of sight and earshot, and his real breadth and presence still lingers against Chris’s entire body, Chris allows himself the heave of his chest, the knock of his head as his neck goes back and he closes his eyes, because he wants, his skin is on fire and he _wants_ , and:

“ _Shit_.”

\--------------------

Chris has a mantra, that he repeats to himself, regarding how he didn’t flub this line, or miss that cue, or deliver this part of that scene with not quite the right feeling. The mantra affirms that he did not do these things on purpose just to tack a few extra moments, that might make up a few extra days, as they reach the end of work on location, and alongside that, the end of any viable excuse Chris has for staying with Sebastian in the New York other than _I want to be with you, I want to drink your coffee and make your dinner for the rest of my goddamn life_.

Which is _not_ a viable excuse.

He’s lucky that he’s smart enough to only repeat said mantra in his head, because it’s a surprise to unlock the door to find Sebastian home already, and fuck. 

_Home_.

Chris is so screwed. 

He means to call out and say hey, ask what Sebastian’s doing back already, make sure everything is fine, but his eyes catch something on the kitchen table first: something innocuous, and odd, but when he looks closer, a memory vivid as anything wins into his mind as he calls out to ask, instead: “What’s this?” 

“Had some time off today,” Sebastian’s voice is low, near. Chris sees him leaning against the walkway from the living room, arms crossed. His tone is somewhere between pleased and nervous. “I wandered into a coupla second hand shops and saw some stuff.”

Chris swallows, hard, as he reaches out for the case on the tabletop. “I…”

“Is that the one?” Sebastian asks, suddenly at Chris’s shoulder.

And yeah. Yeah, it’s the one, if the one is a stupid show from Chris’s childhood that he remembered the sight of but not the name, probably something his own mom picked up second-hand, that he’d mentioned fuck knows when, ages ago, out of nowhere, and how the hell Sebastian had picked up on it, had stored it away as something worth knowing at all, worth _remembering_ , and had then managed somehow to match Chris’s half-assed descriptions of characters and animation and odd themes to this beat-to-hell, taped-together cassette, Chris will never know, but yeah.

“Yeah,” Chris says softly, running a finger over the worn cardboard sleeve. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

“I don’t even have a VHS player,” Sebastian says, like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t mean shit when Chris thinks this might be the most profound thing a person has ever done for him. “But I mean, we can get one easy. Ebay, if nothing else.”

But Chris couldn’t possibly care less about whether or not they have a VHS player on hand. Chris is overflowing, is lightheaded with how much he wants to show Sebastian how much this means to him, how much _Sebastian_ means to be, and before he can stop himself, the desire to show his heart in gratitude is out of his hands.

It’s a chaste thing, and Sebastian neither gives back in it, nor rejects it. Just receives the kiss that Chris lands soft but tender to his lips, and Sebastian tastes of coffee and afternoon rain, and Chris pulls back only enough so that when he speaks their lips brush, but don’t catch.

“Thank you.”

Sebastian’s lips quirk upward, just a little, and he trails the pad of his thumb down Chris’s jaw before he nods, and goes about grabbing plates for dinner.

And that’s that. They don’t say anything about it, don’t make a deal of it. They don’t get a VHS player that evening; they just do what they tend to do on a weekend, which is drink on the couch watching bullshit until one of them falls asleep. This time, Sebastian slumps over first, head pillowed against Chris’s chest, unconsciously nuzzling into Chris’s body and it’s everything, even as it means nothing, even as if fills his heart up hot and heavy like lead all at once, and goddamnit, the warm weight of Sebastian’s body, the slow breath of sleep and the strength of every exhale, Chris thinks he could be here, and watch this, until the day he dies.

He can’t hide this. He can’t kill this in him, doesn’t want to, doesn’t know what he’ll do if he doesn’t have at least the idle unfulfillable _hope_ to grasp at beyond his reach, but he can’t hide this anymore. 

He’s got no idea what he’s going to do.

\--------------------

 

In the end, he doesn’t need to have thought on it. It happens, all on its own, without planning or consent. Sebastian’s eating Chris’s lasagne, and there’s sauce on his lower lip, the fringe of his hair daring to swing into the splotch of red as he leans to slurp a narrow bit of noodle, and Chris can’t help himself. This is what life is supposed to be. He’d fretted over what his world was supposed to look like, supposed to encompass and mean for so fucking long, and here it is, he _knows_ it, and the question comes out on its own.

“Sebastian?”

Sebastian glances up, all lashes with his fork still in his mouth. “Hmm?”

“What are we?”

Chris wants to sink through the floor immediately after the words come out, after Sebastian has them there to hear and know and infer things from, things Chris isn’t necessarily ready for him to guess at but too damn bad, Evans, you jumped in the deep end. Time to sink or paddle to the edge.

Sebastian is quiet, fork still between those goddamn _lips_ , and the sinking option seems more and more appealing with every passing moment.

“Hmm,” Sebastian pops the fork from his mouth, and licks the sauce from his lips. “We’re...people? Human beings?”

Sebastian delivers the answer with such evenness that Chris thinks maybe Sebastian’s just genuinely answering what he thinks is a strange but valid question, except Sebastian’s watching him too closely. There’s so much in those eyes that Chris can’t grasp and sort through, and no. Chris isn’t lucky enough to have dodged this bullet.

He fucking shot it, after all.

“Seb—”

“Chris,” Sebastian says, gaze unwavering even as he sighs, and puts down his utensils, pushes his plate out of the way and props his elbows on the table, then props his chin atop his hands. 

“What do you want us to be?”

And Chris had thought asking his own question was nerve wracking; the way his heart has to stretch wide in order to amass enough blood and force to snap in and pump out is something he’s never felt before. His future is in his hands and it’s not an audition, it’s not success or failure: it’s life or death, somehow, even if it isn’t.

It really _is_.

“Because I,” Sebastian picks up Chris’s gape-mouthed silence, saved his ass like he always does. “Obviously, I want you to be what I come home to,” and Sebastian leaps in front of that bullet and takes it gladly for what Chris wants it to mean, wants it to say: he reaches across the table, palms up and offering and Chris doesn’t think before he places his hands in Sebastian’s, trembling a little until Sebastian links their fingers and stills him.

“I want you to be who I cook for when _you’re_ the one with the long hours, the gruelling workouts, the stiff neck and the tight jaw that _I_ want to knead out from under your skin,” Sebastian says, watching their hands now, his own vulnerability clear in his voice. 

“I want to see something that I think you’d like, that’ll make you smile, that’ll make you happy,” Sebastian smiles at their intertwined fingers, “that makes you kiss me,” and Chris’s heart trips around those words like a child skipping joy too sudden, too thoughtless for just how good it _feels_.

“And I want to know that I’ll get to give it to you in hours, rather than months, because I won’t have to go more than that before I get to see you.” Sebastian looks up, then, and Chris sees the world in the gaze that pins him. Chris sees the future. Chris sees the question of life and death and it’s answer, and it’s beautiful. Jubilant. 

“I want you to have more than a room in my apartment that’s yours,” Sebastian tells him, straight and plain, honest and true. “I want to have a room, in this apartment, that’s _ours_ ,” he turns Chris’s hand in his own, traces the lines on his palm. “A bed, that has a side that’s yours, next to a side that’s mine.” 

He lifts Chris’s hand to his mouth and kisses a space between fingers, cups Chris’s hand to his cheek and closes his eyes. 

“I want to fall asleep on your chest more often than I don’t,” he exhales, just a whisper. “I want to feel you next to me, as often as I can, in whatever way you’re willing.”

He brings both hands to fold Chris’s one between them, kisses Chris’s fingertips while never breaking his gaze before he lets Chris’s hand go.

“And I want whatever part of that, that you want too, to be reality,” he says with a shrug, and a half-smile that giving, but ready to shift and change depending on what Chris desires. “I want whatever part of that idea, whatever part that you want, to be more than just...wanting.”

Chris sits, stunned for a moment, as his heartbeat goes from damn near painful to too fucking fast to catch, to hold. Hummingbirds and wingbeats and falling stars for wishing on except this is real, and this could be _his_.

“So, Chris,” Sebastian starts to prompt, but Chris is ready, now. 

Chris is more than ready.

“I feel safe, when you’re against me, when I’m,” Chris works his throat around a swallow, around bird’s wings as he thinks about what he’s about to say, about the feeling itself, overwhelming, more than anything he’s dared to touch and try to call his own.

“When you’re everywhere, and you take control, and you hold me and you’re so, and I’m just,” Chris shakes his head, and reaches now for Sebastian’s hands, to cradle them to his face, to gather them at _his_ lips.

“I’ve never been more at,” he exhales through both their fingers. “More at peace, with myself, with the world, than I have been these past months, with you.” He looks up at Sebastian, and he can hardly breathe for the sight of clear and clean joy, undiluted, in Sebastian’s gaze. Least possible thing in the world, there in front of him, taking in his confessions of the soul. 

“I like taking care of you, no, I,” Chris hesitates, and thinks, in this at least: baby steps. “I _love_ taking care of you,” he says, and given the widening of Sebastian’s eyes, he thinks the implications come through, all the feelings that live in the background for now, but maybe _only_ just for now, maybe not for much longer, and what a fucking _thought_ that is.

“I love taking care of you, and sitting with you watching stupid shit when we should both be asleep. I love when you fall asleep and slump against me, like it’s the most natural thing, and when you know I need a hug, or just a hand on my shoulder and I don’t have to ask, you just know because you always know, you pay attention and you just see and you, you…”

Chris’s voice grows thick, tapers off; he doesn’t stop holding Sebastian’s hands, but somehow, Sebastian’s managed to take care of _him_ , as _ever_ , and has flipped their hands so that Sebastian’s the one offering the comfort, creating the feeling of warmth.

“I’ve never been the one who fits,” Chris says suddenly, unable to put into clear words what it’s like when Sebastian is warm against _him_ , when Sebastian’s weight holds _him_ place, whe Sebastian’s body is heavy and whole and warm and safe and gorgeous, security and a promise in itself; Chris can’t give that words, just now, but Sebastian understands, always, and Chris puts faith in the fact that he’ll read this, too, for what it _means_.

“I wanna,” Chris licks his lips, swallows ineffectively. “I--”

“I noticed,” Sebastian stands, but doesn’t unwind their hands. “And you _do_ fit, regardless of any of this,” he gestures to their bodies, up and down and encompassing each of their frames.

“But as long as we have it on the table, because fuck if I’m keeping this up after we wrap,” Sebastian flexes his biceps indicatively, and Chris can’t help a breathy giggle, half his age and half his heart, all at once as Sebastian pulls him up from his seat, pulls him close, and breaths against his ear:

“What do you want?”

“You,” Chris answers. That part is simple. 

“You, pressing down,” Chris admits, cheeks reddening for it, though he isn’t ashamed. “Keeping,” Chris adds, too much at sea, too filled with awe at the prospect, the promise in those eyes. “Like,” he breathes. Catches. “Like...”

Chris didn’t notice moving so much, so as to have his knees against the couch, but that’s where he is. That’s where they are.

“Like this?” Sebastian eases them both down as a singular unit, support both their weights until Chris is on the sofa, splayed prone, and Sebastian is free to climb on top of him at will, which he does, quickly and smoothly, slowly lowering his body weight to blanket Chris from bottom to top, snaking his arms beneath Chris at the waist and drawing him upward and in. 

“Yeah.” It’s barely a whisper from Chris’s mouth, but Sebastian’s close enough to Chris’s chest to feel the real force behind it, tied up to his blood in every beat.

And Sebastian hums, and just holds him, just covers him and lets him soak in that feeling he’s never felt before, save for this, save like this, and it might just be what Chris has been looking for his whole goddamn life.

“Wanna stay like this for a while?” Sebastian whispers, straight into Chris’s ear, a pleasant shiver running down Chris’s spine for it that Sebastian holds close with the rest of Chris in his entirety. “Then we can figure out what’s next?”

Chris lifts his head, and Sebastian tips his down, and it’s the first kiss they share that means something more. It is soft, and slow, and a little held back, a little scared to break the moment, and it taste like tomatoes and parmesan and home, and when then break, Chris tucks back under Sebastian’s chin and presses close, listens to the seabreeze swoop of breath as he rises and falls on that chest, strong arms crossed over his back and grasping tight, and yes, he wants to stay like this for a while.

He wants to stay like this forever.

\--------------------

They make it to the bed, before morning. Chris breathes, and it’s still natural even for the extra effort he gives it against the heavy heat that embraces him from every side. It’s the thing his body, his heart, his soul was made for, he thinks: just here. Just this. 

Chris wakes with Sebastian’s full weight against him, curled around him, above him, contorted so Sebastian’s head is tucked against Chris’s chest, while Chris himself is tucked against Sebastian somehow: impossible. Except that it’s exactly what they have, here. What they are.

And it’s everything.


End file.
